2. And the Lord said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are
too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands,
lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me.
Judges 7 King James Version (KJV)
Military Personnel - Minorities
The minorities - Muslim, Christian, Druze and Circassian - have this in common: their language is Arabic and they have family and other ties on the other side of the borders. Since Israel's potential enemies are to be found on the other side of the borders; since war against the Arabs would create an insurmountable conflict of loyalty among the recruits; since, conversely, there would always remain a lingering suspicion towards them as to their trustworthiness - it was found mutually convenient to exclude these citizens of the country from the draft. A suitable legal formula was devised to legitimize the arrangement.
The minorities are exempted from conscription, except the Druze. The Druze leaders decided, early on, to throw in the lot of their community with the nascent Jewish state and, as a token of loyalty, voluntarily waived the exemption to which they were entitled. Some Bedouin tribes have a tradition of voluntary service, primarily as trackers, an art in which they have excelled for generations.
The conscription law on the Knesset’s table in 2024 provided longer service stints for reservists and standing army soldiers from 32 to 36 months. And only the ultra-Orthodox (haredim) would be given a near complete exemption from military service.
The percentage of Druze who perform military service in the Israeli army is 85%, which is greater than the percentage of Jews involved in the ranks of the army. The wars fought by the occupying entity recorded the killing of nearly 400 Druze, who served in various units of the occupation army, especially the selected combat infantry brigades and the police and border guards.
However, Arab circles within the entity talk about the presence of dozens of Druze young men who refuse military service and have been arrested in Atlit and Sarafand prisons. Because they refuse to bear arms against their Palestinian people, and they cannot join the army, which prevents Palestinians from reaching their lands; This reflects the high level of national and national awareness.
Although recent years have witnessed divisions within the Druze community regarding military service in the Israeli army, the Druze community is making some moves to reject the forced conscription imposed on its youth, and the Druze religious authorities in Lebanon and Syria have categorically rejected any dealings with the Israeli army, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Our Druze brothers are partners in maintaining Israeli security, and we will strengthen their position in the Israeli army.” Yaakov Shimoni, the Israeli diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, admitted that “the decision to recruit the Druze into the Israeli army came to be a spear with which we stab Arab nationalism and influence Druze of Syria and Lebanon.
The media publishes from time to time some of the ill-treatment that Druze soldiers suffer, amounting to moral and physical torture, abuse and humiliation from Jewish soldiers. One of them was boycotted by them, and they refused to talk to him, describing him as “a dog and a Palestinian terrorist.”
There is another Druze soldier whose Jewish officer once asked him to clean the toilet, and when he refused, he was prevented from entering the dining room, and no food was brought to him for 3 days. When he filed a complaint with his commanders, they ignored it, and one of them did not hesitate to rebuke him, saying, “I don’t have time now, go away from here, Arab."
Some referred sarcastically to the Jewish nation-state law, considering them first-class citizens in wartime and second-class citizens inside “Israel,” who do not enjoy the same rights as Jews under normal circumstances. The “Nation State Law” passed on 19 July 2018 stipulates that the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.” It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades the status of the Arabic language to a “special status”, despite the fact that Arabs represent approximately 20% of the population of Israel and approximately 36% of the population of Jerusalem as well. For 70 years, both Hebrew and Arabic were designated as official languages in Israel. This law changed that. Druze lawmakers argued that the new law discriminated against Druze, many of whom serve in the military, unlike other Arab citizens.
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